Tele-selling – WP1
A new reality is approaching, by now everyone has been affected by “telemarketing”. Customers and consumers are starting to resist it. That is clear from the laws that are being presented and passed. Customers want service, they want customer service calls. As a result the rules that are set for your telemarketing program should emphasize your wish to have an effective telemarketing program to provide your customer base with high quality customer service. It can be as simple as a word. That word is tele-selling.
Each person has an aura, a reputation in the company or in the market. This presence is a function of many things; knowledge, personality, the quality of voice, the intangibles of attitude. It is the feeling of trust that the customer has in the person on the other end of the telephone. This is a condition that is earned and achieved it is not something that can be mandated.
In telephone selling the customer either has called with the need or you are calling to see if there is a need. Yet now we confront the dilemma. Rarely, if ever, has anybody provided training on tele-selling. This program will provide you with an outline, an approach, to use when selling on the telephone. This program will provide you with a plan, a structure, and with this structure your tele-selling future can get off to a successful start.
Parts Pricing February 13th 12:00 Noon Pacific
Pricing – WP4
Your price is a marketing tool but most of you don’t use it that way. How often have we heard that “your price is too high” or “I can get it down the street for less”? How well customer contact personnel respond to these and other comments about your prices is critically important to your success. The price points you use should be a product of your need to make money and the competitive nature of your marketplace.
Over the years dealers have applied a methodology called “matrix pricing.” This approach started in the 1970’s and it still continues today, well beyond its useful life. We will explain how it works and we will also expose the “new” realities in price theory for the parts business. Looking into the new approach of applying a “array” of variables to develop a selling price; activity, price, competitiveness, and inventory risk. This four element array leads to several thousand mark ups designed to allow the dealer to attach a price that will be competitive while at the same time produce an overall gross profit that allows the Company to maintain the profit required to sustain itself.
Learning the impact of a discount on your business is a critical aspect of defending your price. See the impact on gross profit and net profit. Learning how to respond to price objections and overcome them is a principle that is important to understand and is discussed in this webinar. This webinar will be beneficial for anyone in the parts business that is touching customers with the responsibility for selling or customer service.
Warehousing February 13th 9:00 AM Pacific
Warehousing – WP3
That big area in your facility stuffed with parts can and should be a showcase for your dealership. A distribution center which has been designed and developed to be space effective, productive and safe is a wondrous thing. Not many equipment dealerships have such a warehouse. Do they? A warehouse stores parts, it requires that there are aisles for people and equipment to perform the order picking and receiving functions as well as the physical counts. It also has to have packing and shipping benches as well as staging areas for inbound and outbound shipments. And finally there are the shipping and receiving docks.
This webinar will present warehouse theory from what the location number should consist of to the sizing principals to use in determining the storage space required. It will expose different picking methods and the appropriate storage media and material handling equipment for each. The metrics of picking and packing, storage efficiency, shipping and receiving and dock handling will be developed.
The overall sizing theory of cubic and square foot requirements for each part number stored and systems to utilize that will tell you which location size should be used for which part and how many of each of these location sizes are required helps with the designs and layouts of your warehouse in a manner that can be used by everyone. This is a common sense expose of a little understood area in a dealership: The warehouse.
Basic Inventory Control February 12th 12:00 Noon Pacific
Basic Inventory Control – WP2
Have we completed the transformation of the inventory from being managed by people to being controlled by systems? This webinar will reintroduce the fundamentals of Inventory Control so that everyone can understand why we have the parts we have and don’t have the parts we don’t have. In the market today customers and demanding more service from suppliers and suppliers are shrinking assets at the same time. That is quite a contradiction and one which is impossible to explain without knowledge of the subject. How do we expect the customer contact personnel to be able to serve customers without understanding Inventory Management? This webinar solves that problem.
The basics of order point and order quantity theory will be discussed and explained in a style that is simple yet clear. Lead times, order costs and carrying charges will be exposed and details given as to their content. The fundamental metrics to employ to maintain control of the performance from the inventory rules in the dealer business system will also be covered.
Finally the Backorder Analysis function will be described in detail such that the participants can proceed from the webinar to the operation and conduct this analysis and determine what it is that is causing backorders and what they should do about it. The program will provide you with the understanding and tools necessary to manage a parts inventory more effectively.
TeleSelling February 12th 9:00 AM Pacific
Tele-selling – WP1
A new reality is approaching, by now everyone has been affected by “telemarketing”. Customers and consumers are starting to resist it. That is clear from the laws that are being presented and passed. Customers want service, they want customer service calls. As a result the rules that are set for your telemarketing program should emphasize your wish to have an effective telemarketing program to provide your customer base with high quality customer service. It can be as simple as a word. That word is tele-selling.
Each person has an aura, a reputation in the company or in the market. This presence is a function of many things; knowledge, personality, the quality of voice, the intangibles of attitude. It is the feeling of trust that the customer has in the person on the other end of the telephone. This is a condition that is earned and achieved it is not something that can be mandated.
In telephone selling the customer either has called with the need or you are calling to see if there is a need. Yet now we confront the dilemma. Rarely, if ever, has anybody provided training on tele-selling. This program will provide you with an outline, an approach, to use when selling on the telephone. This program will provide you with a plan, a structure, and with this structure your tele-selling future can get off to a successful start.
Training Tidbit #3
Webinars are a terrific tool to transmit information to people doing the job. Our webinars last about an hour, are subject specific, allow more than one person in the room and are inexpensive at $95.00.
They are the usual format. It is a GoToMeeting style with slides showing bullet points related to the topic being discussed. There is a short Q&A at the end to allow for clarification or expansion on the topic at hand.
In February we are offering a series of webinars on the operations of a Parts Department as well as the operations of a Service Department in the Capital Goods Industries.
For the Parts Group
For the Service Group
Those of you that have not attended one of these informative webinars should make the time and register. You won’t be sorry. The time is now.
Management Musings 2.3
Let’s start a New Year – 2013 Practice. How about you take a process, any process and give it a fresh review?
Sit with your group and talk about the things that you do. Discuss them openly and without bias. Choose something that someone thinks might be done a little bit better. Have them take responsibility for a review of that process in the coming week with a report back to the group the following Friday. Then select a new one the following week and so on.
At the end of the year you will have had fifty two processes reviewed. The priority will have come from the group itself not you and one of your team members will have led the review and reported the findings back to the group. This should result in more engaged and motivated team members. They will all have their fingertprints all over everything that you do as a team.
The time is now.
Friday Filosophy 2013-01
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstone of our character
Henry David Thoreau
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers
Orison Swett Marsden
The time is now…..
Management Musings 2.2
There continues to be more research suggesting that incentives don’t work. This should lead us to reexamine our commission programs shouldn’t it?
Barney Frank, that once famous or infamous (your call) congressman, spoke at the Annual Awards dinner of the trade newspaper “American Banker” in 2004. He began his talk with a question “At the level of pay that those of you who run banks get, why the hell do you need a bonus to do the right thing?” Of course there was no answer given there was silence, so he continued. “Do we really have to bribe you to do you jobs?”
The same holds true for incentive programs on all manner of jobs. Are we truly trying to modify behavior with these programs or just pay more money?
I think it is time to ask some questions for instance:-
Just wondering why but then again that is what I do. Check out the studies and you will find that salaries are a better payment plan than commission programs.
The time is now.
Management Musings 2.1
In bouncing around the internet this morning I found an article from Forbes contributor Mike Maddock on “Ten Resolutions Most Successful People Make and Keep.” It was interesting and particularly so when it came to the tenth resolution.
“#10 Plan vacations (now)
You have probably heard the saying, “Life is what happens when you are not paying attention.” Unfortunately for many of us, we let this become true. Do yourself a favor and plan your vacations for the next year today. I promise you that the days around your vacation will fill in nicely. I also promise you that you’ll have something to look forward to and the life that happens during your vacations will be precious.”
With the exception that I believe that “Life Is What Happens When You Are Planning Other Things,” it brought to mind an item in Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline” which I have tried to follow religiously since I read it in the 80’s.
He puts forward that when planning the activites of your work year you should plan your personal time before anything else. He suggests that if you don’t do that you won’t have any personal time. I found that to be true in the early years of starting our business. So I changed. From that point on I put on the schedule personal time and held it out of bounds for any other activity. It worked. I was more refreshed – I could think more clearly, my family liked me better – I was less of a bear to be around, and we ultimately became more successful. Try it you will like it.
The time is now.
Management Musings 2.0
Today is a wonderful day. Welcome to 2013 and I hope that your every desire is accomplished; Health, Happiness and Prosperity to each and every one of you.
– Don’t let anyone take away your dreams.
– Always assume the other person is twice as smart as you are and work twice as hard to prove they aren’t.
– Be happy in your work or work and be happy but you can’t escape you have to work.
– You can do more than you thought you could and you can be more than you thought you were
All the best – The time is NOW.